Remote Data Collection

A New Eye In The Sky: High Frequency, Multispectral Satellite Constellation Approaches 2026 Debut

Thu, 11 Sep 2025 19:40:17 GMT

The 2025 crop season has been a solid proving ground for the value and utility of satellite and aerial imagery in farming.

That’s because corn and soybean fields this summer appeared incredibly healthy and high-yielding from the drive-by scouting pass in the pick-up truck, but then crop scouts marched into those same fields , uncovering widespread yield variability and a high level of foliar disease pressure .

EarthDaily (formerly Geosys) says it will soon leverage a new satellite constellation to beat USDA yield forecasts by capturing daily calibrated images of crops and feeding those images through artificial intelligence (AI) tools.

The news

Satellite imagery of a corn field in the U.S. with corresponding NDVI (plant health) and precipitation data all the way back to 2017.

(EarthDaily)

EarthDaily says it intends to provide daily, high-quality aerial data that agronomists, grain traders and commodity brokers can use to get snapshots-in-time for farm fields, without ever having to launch a camera drone or upload thousands of images to stitch together an orthomosaic. Farmers also stand to benefit because the data will be available within many popular farm management information software systems.

The company is in the process of launching a new 10-satellite constellation that will be fully operational by the 2026 cropping season. This constellation is different from other ag-monitoring satellites orbiting the earth in that it will feature a yellow-band index among its impressive 22 spectral bands.

How is it different from other ag satellites?

EarthDaily satellite data showing the crop progress of China’s corn production regions for the last five growing seasons. The 2025 trend line (black) shows higher than historical average crop health.

(EarthDaily)

“Most [ag] satellites do not have an imager to collect the yellow band,” says Nick Ohrtman, key accounts success lead, EarthDaily. “We have a yellow band imager on ours that we’re pretty excited about moving forward, because obviously yellowing is a key indicator of a lot of plant stresses.”

Ohrtman adds the company has yet to get out and ground-truth the yellow-band imagery in the field, but the potential to catch more yield-robbing agronomic issues on the front-end and alert retail agronomists before crops really take a hit is intriguing.

Intriguing, yes. But Ohrtman, a former Iowa farm kid himself who still helps with the family farm when he’s not working in Minneapolis, says it still serves as just a complement to the traditional scouting pass. Nothing will ever replace farmer and/or agronomist boots-on-the-ground, he adds.

“You can’t be in every field every day, walking crops,” Ohrtman says. “But if you are in the field, you’re probably going to know better than I am from a satellite.”

Main takeaways, per EarthDaily:

The EarthDaily Constellation is purpose-built for broad area change detection, with 16 imagers on each bus capturing 22 spectral bands at the same time each day.
The system will be able to deliver AI-ready data that brings speed and accuracy of insights to today’s EO analytics market.
The full constellation will be operational in 2026, though the robustness of the data will not fully align with the crop season until then.
Among its 22 spectral bands, the yellow band, unique to EarthDaily, is valuable for detecting early signs of crop stress.
EarthDaily’s offering begins with data capture, which is then transformed into downstream analytics purpose-built for agriculture.
For farmers, the technology pinpoints when and where attention is needed in the field, predicting crop health and providing actionable insight without constant boots-on-the-ground monitoring.

Your next read: Could USDA Raise Corn Yields in the Report? Is China Buying U.S. Soybeans?

Farm Drone News: AgEagle Multispectral Sensor, GPS Satellite Launched and Rantizo Spins Off Software

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 18:08:05 GMT

AgEagle Aerial Systems Unveils New RedEdge-P Green Camera

(AgEagle Aerial Systems)

AgEagle Aerial Systems announces the launch of its new RedEdge-P Green, a multispectral camera designed to enable precision agriculture from planting to harvest.

AgEagle says farmers that use the new sensor payload can achieve higher yields through quicker interventions both early on and late in the crop cycle. Operators can reduce fertilizer and irrigation inputs and engage in smart harvesting techniques using optimized indices and targeted indices like the Plant Senescence Reflectance Index (PSRI).

Available as a standalone camera or in paired configurations with the original RedEdge-P and the RedEdge-P Blue, users can leverage up to 15 noise-resistant, data-rich spectral bands essential for large-area precision agriculture.

The RedEdge-P Green camera is NDAA-compliant and integrates with multiple drone platforms. Each camera kit includes a Calibrated Reflectance Panel (CRP) and a Downwelling Light Sensor (DLS2) for radiometric calibration.

Production of the RedEdge-P Green camera is underway, and the first units are expected to ship this week. For more information about the RedEdge-P Green visit ageagle.com.

Dutch Startup Launches Largest GPS Network for Drones, Tractors

(Lindsey Pound, iStock)

FreshMiners, a Netherlands-based IOT firm, launched a GPS service that enables accurate positioning for agriculture, construction and drone navigation, according to AgriMarketing.com.

AgriMarketing.com writes that the Dutch company is launching a service for extra-accurate GPS. It is intended for drone pilots, farmers and others. With this new technology, users can correct their GPS positions down to the centimeter. Real-time correction signals are sent to the user’s GPS receiver via a global network of base stations. This correction is essential for applications in agriculture, land surveying and drone navigation, among other things.

A subscription gives users access to the GEODNET network, which, with more than 19,000 base stations in over 140 countries, is now reportedly the largest RTK network in the world.

Read more at AgriMarketing.com.

Missouri Doctoral Student Says Drones Are Fine Tool for Crop Scouting

(Photo by Abbie Lankitus)

Researchers at the University of Missouri have discovered a mix of drones and AI can help farmers measure the health of their corn more efficiently.

Instead of relying on handheld devices, which are slow and impractical for larger fields, the researchers surveyed corn fields in mid-Missouri using drones equipped with special cameras to capture images and data.

After combining the drone images with soil data, the Mizzou researchers used a type of AI known as machine learning to quickly predict the chlorophyll content in the corn leaves of the entire field with great accuracy.

The study was led by Fengkai Tian (pictured above), a Mizzou doctoral student who works in the lab of Jianfeng Zhou, an associate professor in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources.

Read more from the University of Missouri here.

Rantizo Spin-Off American Autonomy Inc. Says It Can Close the Spray Drone Data Loop

Rantizo is now connected with the John Deere Operations Center through John Deere API services.

(Rantizo)

Ground rig as-applied data has been around for decades, and it comes in handy when you’re tabulating your end of year scorecard to find out which treatments boosted yields and where a spray might have fallen short.

Yet even though spray drones treated over 10 million crop acres in 2024 alone, there’s still a gap that exists in capturing that data and integrating it into your farm management software.

Former Rantizo CEO Mariah Scott, who is now the CEO of a spinoff operation dubbed American Autonomy Inc., says her new outfit’s AcreConnect platform can help close that gap with API connections into John Deere’s Operations Center and more major FMIS platforms.

“We talk to farmers about getting that complete view of your field management, by closing the loop so you understand what’s effective or what’s not,” Scott says. “Most of the farmers we talk to use spray drones and a ground sprayer, and that (as-applied) data from the sprayer goes right into their FMIS account, but with the spray drone it doesn’t always work like that.”

The deal to divest the spray drone operations side of the business was quietly announced on Aug. 1. The Rantizo name, the startup is a pioneering spray drone service provider, still lives on, but now there’s a clean break between the spraying operations and the software on the back end that enables it.

Learn more about the Rantizo-American Autonomy Spinoff over at PRNewswire.

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Meet The Forge: Kelly Hills Unmanned Puts New Spin on Ag Tech Field Testing

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 11:53:55 GMT

Over the weekend, Kelly Hills Unmanned, a company that says it is dedicated to accelerating multimodal technologies in agriculture and autonomy, announced the launch of The Forge.

It’s being described as a deployment-centered program designed to meld best-in-class ag technologies into new tools that farmers, ranchers and service providers can trust and use for decades to come, according to a press release from the group.

The Forge’s inaugural cohort hopes to bring together a “powerhouse group” of innovators and operators from across the ag technology landscape into a coordinated, systems approach to help growers identify and overcome agronomic issues before they become yield robbers.

The cohort members, or pillars, are:

Precision AI: Developers of real-time drone-based precision spraying systems that reduce chemical inputs and deliver hyper-targeted agronomic action.
Pyka: Builders of autonomous electric aircraft designed for aerial applications, logistics and mission-critical crop operations.
ScanIt Technologies: Experts in using early detection of airborne pathogens to maximize yields and minimize costs.
Heinen Brothers Agra Services: One of the nation’s largest aerial applicators and ag services companies, offering deployment scale and deep field expertise.
Yamaha Precision Agriculture: Pioneers of robotic and aerial technology for small scale, high-efficiency farming.
Drop Flight: Providers of droplet characterization and aircraft calibration tools to optimize spray accuracy and compliance in real-world operations.
Taranis: Global leaders in ultra-high-resolution aerial scouting, delivering precise field-level insights to boost agronomic decision-making.

For more information, head to www.kellyhills.us/the-forge .

Farm Journal reached out to Lukas Koch to pick his brain about this new, novel entrant to the ag tech ecosystem. We first met Koch last year during the Kelly Hills Unmanned summer field day near Seneca, Kan., where his group unveiled the Pyka Pelican Spray drone — at the time the largest, highest-capacity ag spray drone on the market (280-liter capacity). This year Kelly Hills is integrating the Pelican 2 (300-liter capacity, up to 222 acres per hour at 60-foot swath rate) into its aerial application arsenal.

Farm Journal: Would you call this an ag tech incubator or accelerator type of program, and if not, what’s makes The Forge different?

Lukas Koch (LK): “(The Forge) is neither of those, because we’re not taking a cash influx to create an R&D program. What we’re doing is creating new tools with existing technology — if they’re part of plug and play that’s fine, but we don’t care about that. We want to know if the tech has merit and does it fit on the acre, but maybe something with it is not fully there just yet? So, what are we supposed to do with it then? You have a technology and, for example, it can take high-res pictures and identify areas of your fields that need attention, but today the most likely options are using a ground rig or hiring an airplane to manage that in a meaningful way. For that example, we think there’s an opportunity to do that with a small spray drone, but then again the logistics are tough; you have to come back and land and swap out a battery or refill the tank so often. We’re going to take a bunch of existing technologies that already exist, ask them to change nothing and put them to the test — and we’ll push the bounds of what they can do, to make these all work together in a system.”

FJ: How will this all kind of come together and take shape this summer as the program rolls out?

LK: “We have a few drone companies (in the cohort), and there’s a droplet analysis program involved — I thought that was an important piece in analyzing the spray coverage we get. Right now, we have the in-field sensors out in the field to help us ground truth the data we get from overhead. And then the remote sensing piece gives us situational awareness; it tells us where we should be focusing our efforts. And overall, I think, OK, that’s great, but now you still have to make a treatment with either a ground rig or hire an airplane.

(www.KellyHills.us)

“But with our FAA test range (pictured above) that we were approved for last summer within Kelly Hills, now we can autonomously fly to those spots with a drone, either in line of sight or Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS), and we can make those treatments autonomously. This year, the tool we’re focusing on is true spot spraying BVLOS in corn and soybeans, and then next year hopefully we can make more tools or take that technology that already exists and make it into a tool for a grower, who can sign up for this subscription and buy one of these drones, and now I have a full encompassing suite of tools and I can know for sure what works and what does not work.”

FJ: How can farmers in Kansas learn more and possibly sign up to work with you guys?

LK: “There’s really two ways right now. For anything specific they might want to do, maybe there are some projects they are thinking about, go ahead and ping us on the website , and we’ll get back to you. And the other way is, once we’re done with a set tool or we wrap up our summer series of projects, we plan to make the results and findings available online, kind of like Beck’s Hybrids does with its farm applied research studies. We want people to see what we’re doing and to reach out with their ideas on how we can make better tools inside of The Forge and showcase some of these technologies together in one new product, and growers are very interested in this and would love to understand if they can package these technologies together and make an ROI.”

FJ: You already have this inaugural cohort in place, but are you already thinking about what’s next?

LK: “I have a couple companies that I need to further engage with now that they can see what The Forge is all about. A couple of those are involved in year-over-year (data) modeling technology that can say, OK, help me start to determine this is my pattern, and this is what I did last year; now can you tell me what to do next year and how to create more ROI? And then I think soil is a huge key right now, too. I don’t have any any soil type products in there, and soil sampling is great, but there are some neat companies that are focusing on soil-sensing technology that I think would be interesting to package in there, too. You know, in due time I think we’ll get there.”

Koch says the plan is to unveil many of the insights and results from The Forge at this summer’s Kelly Hills Unmanned Field Day. That event is set for Aug. 19, and you can get registered for it here.

And, just for fun, here’s a video breakdown of the Pyka Pelican 2:

Your Next Read: How To Navigate Foliar Fungicide Use in a Tight Soybean Market

New Partnership Automates Delivery of Customized Planting Prescriptions

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 16:40:18 GMT

A new partnership between Corteva and John Deere is making planting season a more enjoyable, seamless process for some U.S. corn and soybean growers in 2025.

The companies are automating a process many row-crop growers historically jotted down in a notebook or, more recently, stored on a USB flash drive – their planting prescriptions.

The partners, who are integrating the digital and onboard capabilities of the John Deere Operations Center with the agronomic expertise and analysis of Corteva, can deliver field-by-field planting prescriptions direct to farmers’ equipment via the cloud and a wireless connection.

Andy Fabin, second from left, says he was able to improve the planting accuracy on his farm ten-fold last season because of automating his hybrid and variety placement in the field.

(Rhonda Brooks)

Andy Fabin, who participated in the partners’ 2024 pilot program and signed on again this season, says when he or an employee drives into the field boundary, the display in the tractor cab will pop up with the work plan for that field. The farmer accepts the work plan, and all the information will populate into the display and they are ready to plant.

“That’s one of the beauties of this – I don’t have to rely on the operator to know anymore exactly what hybrid is supposed to go into that field,” says Fabin, who’s based near Indiana, Pa. “That information has been preplanned and put into the computer. I don’t have to worry that, ‘whoops, I keyed in the wrong information.’ I know it’s going to be correct.”

Correct Data From The Get-Go
Good data about which hybrid or variety is going into a field sets the grower up for season-long success from the start, notes Trenton Brisby, North America agronomy innovation manager for Corteva .

“We’re able to auto-create a work plan for the grower now, something we had not been able to do before,” Brisby says. He adds that the work plans can be based on a flat seeding rate or a variable rate prescription. Either way, the goal is to place every seed where it can perform up to its maximum yield potential.
Lindsey Pollock, agronomy collaboration manager for John Deere, says information the work plan delivers helps streamline the time and effort it takes for growers to start planting. “We know they’re in a hurry, that they want to get that seed in the ground. The [technology] is reducing the time and mistakes that could happen within those work plans,” Pollock says.

That was true for Fabin, who says the work plans improved the planting accuracy on his farm ten-fold last season.
“Having the information delivered wirelessly really made a difference,” he reports. “If we had to travel 15 miles back to the office to get something and bring it back to the field, I mean, that’s hours that the planter could be sitting. And to be honest, it wasn’t going to happen. We were going to go into the field, plant and fix it later.”

A lot of farmers find themselves dealing with that same issue or a similar one during planting season, says Corbin Crownover, Pioneer sales representative.

“Every year we’ve had cases where the same seed corn hybrid could be named three different ways in the monitor, so we’d have to sort that out and get the information adjusted at the end of the year before we could do anything with the data,” Crownover recalls. “When we can make the [hybrid] numbers all accurate the way they should be, it makes things easier for all of us in the post-harvest review and analysis.”

How The Process Works
The basic process of building the work plan involves a handful of steps, according to Brisby, who outlined the steps for Farm Journal in a brief discussion.

First, the Pioneer sales representative works with the grower to develop a hybrid and variety placement plan for each field, Brisby says.

Next, the representative then connects with the John Deere Operations Center to make a work plan for each field, using either flat or variable seeding rates. Then, the grower is contacted to review the plan.

“Once they give the representative permission, the rep can then push the work plan direct to the equipment monitor,” Brisby says. “When the grower goes to the field to plant they get a pop up on their monitor screen that says, ‘You have a new work plan. Do you want to accept this?’ The grower can say ‘yes,’ and then start planting.”

The grower can also answer no, in case he needs to use a different hybrid or variety in a field. If needed, the operator can load the new seed information into the system manually.

However, Crownover says the grower’s seed sales representative can load multiple varieties and hybrids into the system, so they are included in the original work plan. This gives the farmer the ability to switch between seed products without having to go through a manual step. “We’re able to fine-tune seed selection and placement so farmers can feel more confident that their fields are going to be planted as prescribed,” Crownover says.

Technology Needed To Participate
In some cases, farmers who might want to participate in the partners’ program lack the equipment or are unable to wirelessly send and receive data.

“This is where we really believe strengthening the relationship and collaborating comes into place between Pioneer and John Deere,” Brisby says. “Working together, we can make sure the customer is able to get what they need.”

Fabin says he appreciated being able to work with Corteva and John Deere in the pilot program. “I appreciate all this technology, as a small business owner,” he says. “Capital is something we really have to manage, and these partnerships are a way for me to leverage the equipment we’ve already got. If we can reduce inputs whether seed, fertilizer or chemicals it’s good for us and is why I partner with these two companies.”

For 2025, John Deere and Corteva are expanding the pilot program to additional U.S. farmers before rolling out the program on a more widespread basis, which the companies anticipate for 2026.

Your Next Read: Corn on Corn Takes Root As Farmers Look for Profits

Why Reliable Connectivity is the Key to Smart Farming Success

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 18:29:00 GMT

For smart farming technologies to have an on-farm impact, machine connectivity must be robust.

“What farmers need most are tools or systems that will help them avoid one of their staunchest enemies: downtime,” says Alex Ngu, product marketing, Trimble. “If there’s been rain for two weeks, the skies clear and you have one day to take off the crop, downtime due to shoddy signals can cut deeply.

Current estimates show roughly 20% to 30% of rural areas in the U.S. do not have sufficient cellular network coverage. Equipment manufacturers are partnering with satellite connectivity providers to ensure you don’t have to stop and wait for a strong connection. Or worse yet, forge ahead without capturing the data needed.

Enhanced Options

Case IH announced a collaboration with international satellite provider Intelsat in spring 2024. Intelsat offers the world’s largest satellite network alongside terrestrial (cellular) to increase connectivity. Its best known for providing in-flight Wi-Fi to many well-known commercial airline brands. Kendal Quandahl, precision segment lead, says Case IH plans to expand the beta testing for its new satellite terminals with farmers in South America as well as other regions. The service is currently being tested in North America, but is not yet available.

For Quandahl, who still farms with her family, it’s all about offering options so farmers can choose the service that works best for them.

“If you think about it, there are areas where Verizon is really strong and AT&T isn’t, and then you might go somewhere else where Verizon doesn’t have good coverage,” Quandahl says. “Previously, in our equipment we have had farmers choose one cell provider. Now we’ve enhanced our hardware, so it can talk to multiple providers. Very soon, we’ll offer satellite as another option.”

Quandahl says the connectivity module will come in a small box that’s installed into a tractor or combine cab by mounting a receiver and plugging in a cable or two. When paired alongside a receiver that can pull in cellular signals, the pair can offer peace of mind to a farmer due to the redundancy of having both signals available at the same time.

Quandahl is seeing a lot of farmer interest in satellite connectivity, and she has heard from several Case IH dealers that are also excited about being able to use the signal to remote into machines and help growers troubleshoot their issues.

Coverage Boost

John Deere made big waves in 2024 when the manufacturer announced its partnership with Elon Musk’s low earth orbit satellite service Starlink. The two companies joined forces to develop satellite receivers that farmers can install on their John Deere machines to keep them connected. The service,
called JDLink Boost, is available through John Deere dealers, though pricing has not been publicly released as of press time.

Mike Kool, senior product manager for connected fleets, shares the beta test phase for JDLink Boost provided some really good feedback from test farmers in the U.S. and Brazil.

“Generally, they told us how well it works switching between satellite and cellular, and that’s really our goal,” he says. “It’s giving customers the ability to augment satellite where they cannot connect to cell, and vice versa.”

With John Deere taking another step forward in the autonomy market with the release of its Next Generation Perception System for autonomous tillage on the 8R and 9R series tractors in January, Kool says it’s absolutely critical to maintain high connectivity when a machine is in autonomous mode.

“Our goal with this is to drive value, and connectivity is just so foundational to our technology stack,” Kool says. “Now we can do that in a multitude of flavors and give our customers the ability to get their data back into their operations however they see fit.

“That data is key for our customers because it generates a scorecard at the end of the year — how did I perform, and what tweaks do I need to make for next year to be more productive?”

While generally viewed as rivals in the heavy ag equipment space, there’s one thing Case IH and John Deere can both find common ground around when it comes to connectivity.

“I’d say the benefit of adopting satellite through an OEM is we’ve focused on integrating it directly into our equipment,” Quandahl says. “We don’t have to interrupt the operator’s day-to-day to install or change connectivity providers, and they appreciate that.”

Did You Know?

Kansas State University associate professor Terry Griffin analyzed the financial impact to farmers from the May 10, 2024, GPS outage, which was caused by solar weather and sun flares in outer space. Many farmers around the Midwest were right in the middle of planting during the outage.

Griffin found that (assuming a minimum of 200 bu. per acre yield and $4.50 crop price) Illinois farmers who were delayed by the outage and forced to plant corn later in the month experienced losses of up to $90 per acre.

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Technology News: BASF Adds Spray Timer to xarvio, Case IH Expands Tillage and Tech Offerings, and more

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 20:31:00 GMT

BASF is introducing a new spray timer tool for efficient and accurate fungicide management, according to a press release .

The digital tool is available in xarvio FIELD MANAGER and will alert users to when a fungicide treatment is needed for a specific field. Alerts are based on the existing disease situation, advanced growth stage and disease prediction modeling, which includes weather and historic field data.

Spray alerts also provide an overview of daily weather conditions while connecting operators to product lists to create tank mixes.

“Spray timer users can gain access to prescriptive fungicide timing and field placement alerts, empowering them to improve disease contro while optimizing fungicide investment,” said Kyle King, U.S. digital farming commercial lead, BASF Agricultural Solutions.

Spray Timer works complementary to xarvio SeedSelect in FIELD MANAGER, providing decision support for seeding and crop protection in corn and soybeans.

To learn more, visit: www.xarvio.com.

Case IH expands tech offerings

Case IH is announcing new precision tech offerings that promise to limit the physical wear and tear of manual, in-field corrections and offer greater accuracy and data insights.

For model year 2025 machines:

Soil Command will be factory-fitted on select sizes of Case IH Speed-Tiller 475 and VT-Flex 435 tillage equipment and work on any ISO-compatible tractor that is equipped to handle hydraulic needs.
Case IH Active Implement Guidance gives farmers a plug-and-play system to correct implement drift while navigating planting, tillage and side-dressing.

“Technology is about more than data; it should also make farmers’ lives easier,” said Kendal Quandahl, precision technology segment lead, Case IH. “Whether it’s fewer in-and-out cab trips to adjust tillage machinery or taking soil management to the next level with prescription tillage, we are providing flexible technology solutions to meet the individual needs of farmers.”

MSU researchers develop low-cost irrigation sensors

Michigan State University researchers have developed and are testing a low-cost irrigation monitoring system called LOCOMOS, according to a university press release.

The work is led by Younsuk Dong, an assistant professor and irrigation specialist in the Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering.

With LOCOMOS, the in-field sensors measure soil moisture, leaf wetness and other environmental conditions. The data is analyzed by software that generates precise irrigation recommendations and delivers them to growers via a smartphone app. The development of the system and app was facilitated through a partnership with the MSU Innovation Center.

Iowa State alumnus tackles soil compaction with SmartProbe

Terraform Tillage’s new SmartProbe System features the SmartProbe app and a mounting kit that attaches a smartphone to a soil penetrometer, a device that identifies soil compaction by measuring resistance to vertical penetration.

With the SmartProbe a farmer can record penetrometer readings and create maps showing yield-robbing soil compaction at different depths in the field. This allows sub-surface tillage to be focused on areas of the field that need it.

“Growers know soil compaction isn’t uniform across a field,” says Josh Jeske, founder and developer, Terraform Tillage. “The SmartProbe System allows growers to focus subsoiling on areas that will provide an economic return.”

The SmartProbe app is available in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. The app is free until 2025. After that, it is available on a subscription basis. The mounting kit can be purchased at the Terraform Tillage website.

The SmartProbe System is also available as a service in Iowa. Growers there can contract Terraform Tillage to map fields for $5 per acre.

Explore further at TerraformTillage.com.

Google’s Parent Company Alphabet Disperses Its Ag Tech Subsidiary

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 20:49:05 GMT

Announced earlier today, Mineral, Alphabet’s ag company, will wind down its operations.

“Mineral will no longer be an Alphabet company, and our technology will live on inside of leading agribusinesses where they can have maximum impact,” said Mineral CEO Elliott Grant in a blog post.

Mineral was founded in 2018 as part of X, the moonshot factory of Alphabet, and it had about 100 team members.

What did Mineral develop and build:

• an image database of more than 17 crops in every stage of growth in multiple environments.

• A four-wheeled semi-autonomous rover platform with multiple configurations and the core functionality as a data collection machine.

• in-field harvest analysis and post-harvest crop condition ratings for berry crops in partnership with Driscoll’s

• a geospatial analysis platform that has collected more than 450 million acres of farmland.

• Phenotyping databases and analysis

• And additional machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies.

Here’s a link to previous coverage about Mineral.

Driscoll’s has confirmed it will license the tech it partnered with Mineral to develop.

“Mineral had partnered closely with Driscoll’s - the world’s leading berry company - to develop AI tools to improve crop phenotyping, better forecast yields, optimize quality inspections, and reduce food waste in the supply chain. Some of the technologies we developed have now been transferred to Driscoll’s and will be integrated into their systems to help achieve their sustainability ambitions. Driscoll’s is the first agribusiness to receive Mineral technology, and is a first step towards ensuring that our breakthrough technologies achieve the greatest impact,” Grant said.

In closing he gave an analogy of the company’s name to the how it can be applied as a verb in the agricultural context:

“In soil science, mineralization is the process by which the nutrients in organic matter are released in a form that makes them available to the plants around them. I think this is a fitting metaphor for the new chapter of Mineral - as our technologies will be mobilized into the agriculture ecosystem, with the goal of making it more sustainable, and more resilient.”

OPI Debuts Handheld Grain Bin Data Device

Fri, 03 May 2024 14:33:26 GMT

OPI has introduced a handheld grain monitoring gadget, Blue Lite, for what it is calling “tech-averse farmers who want to take a first step toward automated data collection.”

“It’s a light, simplified unit that fits our data-driven grain management technology in the palm of your hand,” says Adam Weiss, CEO.

OPI says Blue Lite is setup to handle small- to medium-sized bins. The rechargeable, Bluetooth device can read two and three wire cable configurations. The handheld collects data on grain temperature, moisture and CO2. Farmers then access information on their phone or the cloud. A $100 annual subscription fee is required.

“I was looking for a better way to store data,” says Aaron Foy, who farms with his dad and brother in Saskatchewan, Canada. “You turn it on, hit Bluetooth; it connects, and it’s done. It does everything automatically.”

Take a deeper dive here.

Drones: American Option Emerges Amid DJI Ban Saga

Mon, 22 Apr 2024 13:46:19 GMT

Anzu Robotics, an emerging U.S.-based commercial drone manufacturer, announces its entrance into the drone market with the launch of two enterprise aerial platforms: Raptor and Raptor T.

According to reporting by TechRadar.com , in a one-time deal for its new Raptor series (not an ongoing DJI partnership) Anzu Robotics has built Raptor and Raptor T upon the popular and capable DJI Mavic 3E platform.

TechRadar also reports that Anzu is manufacturing its drones in Malaysia (with operations based in Austin, Texas), representing a new solution that potentially satisfies geopolitical and cyber security concerns.

RELATED: Feds Issue Warning on Chinese-Manufactured Drones as Farmer Adoption Soars

The software driving the drones is entirely developed in the United States through a collaboration with Aloft Technologies, Inc., a Syracuse, New York, firm well known in the commercial drone market.

Anzu itself is owned and operated by American citizens and offers US support, service, and, most importantly, hosts all data on domestic servers.

The Raptor series combines enterprise grade hardware with domestic, secure and capable software, offering commercial use across a wide range of applications. It will be particulary interesting to see if DroneDeploy and other third-party flight planning and data management software companies release integrations with Anzu.

“These platforms meet the highest standards of quality, reliability, and innovation,” said Randall Warnas, CEO of Anzu Robotics. Warnas is the former CEO of Autel Robotics.

The Raptor-series platforms boast the following imaging features, alongside a solid 45-minute flight time (per battery) and 9-mile range (well beyond a single operator’s unaided visual line of sight):

Raptor-series drones carry a high-resolution visual inspection platform with a 4/3-inch 20mp wide, and 1/2-inch 12mp CMOS cameras. Together they offer hybrid zoom capabilities up to 56x.
The Raptor T (Thermal) combines 1/2-inch 48mp and 12mp cameras with a 640 x 512 high-resolution LWIR thermal imaging payload.

Learn more at anzurobotics.com.

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Smart Firmer: What Is It, What Can I Do With The Data?

Spoiled Grain? There Are Apps for That

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 20:28:21 GMT

Grain bin monitoring technology adoption is driven primarily by profitability, grain quality, and farmer safety.

“Farmers have monitored their grain bins for many years – they would open the bin, smell it, and check the level by banging a wrench against the side,” says David Postill, senior VP of digital and global marketing, Ag Growth International (AGI). “Today we have much better, safer and accurate methods.”

AGI’s BinManager is one notable grain bin monitoring system, but most operate within a similar framework: in-bin sensors, or cables, record data. Farmers set their target moisture percentages (often 14% to 15% for corn, higher for soybeans) and the technology goes to work in the background. Push notification alerts flag any issues.

“The bin is the farmer’s bank account. Imagine if you had to take your yearly salary and bury it in the backyard, wait a year, and then dig it up and take it to the bank,” Postill says. “You would never do that. You’d safeguard it, monitor it, and maybe even put it into a higher-yielding account.”

Boots-on-the-ground perspective

Ulysses, Nebraska, farmer Lukas Fricke knows firsthand the value of technology. He farms with his brother on ground his father and grandfather worked for decades.

Union Farms, the brothers’ farming operation, holds both corn and soybeans across an array of bin sizes. They truck grain to the local elevator, and they truck beans to crush into soybean oil to feed their hogs. The duo stuck a toe in the water a couple years ago, adding AGI monitoring tech to one of the soybean bins.

“The return-on-investment was fast – it paid for itself that first year,” says Fricke, adding the automation unlocked 300-400 extra bushels of soybean moisture.

The brothers were sold.

“We just did the other three bins this year – now every piece of grain on our farm is being managed and watched and guarded,” he says.

Fricke cautions farmers might suffer sticker shock at the up-front costs – the brothers went for the top tier AGI monitoring suite, after all – but it proved a wise investment.

“During harvest we’ve got pig loads going out and coming in, feed coming in, fields to harvest, manure to put away, if you don’t have your head screwed on it can get out of hand very quickly,” Fricke says.

Breaking down the basics

The basic conditions being monitored are temperature and moisture levels (relative humidity). Integrated on-farm weather stations, as well as Co2 monitoring sensors, represent a higher level of management. The goal, according to HTS Ag President Adam Gittins, is perfectly conditioned grain with zero farmer entry.

“I like to joke there are two types of farmers out there: those that have had some grain spoil, and those that lie about it,” Gittins says.

While mold, generally the product of low temperature and high moisture, is the main nemesis, the systems prevent over drying, too. Water is weight, and weight is money at the elevator.

“The sky is the limit when it comes to what it can do,” says Gittins, noting data aggregation with planter and combine data for full traceability from field to elevator remain the next big breakthroughs.

HTS Ag installs and services OPI Grain Management Systems, which Gittins says has 40 years of grain monitoring experience. He says the OPI Blue system gives farmers remote access to real time moisture, temperature, and CO2, as well as automation, set to the grower’s parameters and using bin specific weather conditions. “This fall, we had a run of cool moist air run at my bin site, and I was able to rehydrate my beans a few points with OPI’s fan automation,” says Gittins.

“With most tech being cloud based, you can have true up and downstream data integration and track grain through the last mile,” he adds. “It’s an exciting time to be a part of this technology.”

Boosting quality of life

Matt Koch, chief marketing officer, Sukup, echoes that sentiment. Koch spent his early days as a developer and engineer in automation systems. Today he’s putting that background to work helping farmers understand how Sukup’s monitoring technology can improve quality of life.

Sukup recently closed on a Des Moines, Iowa, based custom automation company, Ramco Innovations, to build out its yet-to-be-released bin monitoring ecosystem. Details are scant, but what Koch can confirm is the finished product will hit the market in 2025. And it will make users’ lives easier.

“If we can sell back quality of life to our customers, that is really where we’re going to win,” Koch says. “Bins are a commoditized product – but if I told you we can automate the process today that you’re doing manually, and you can have full visibility into the process and not have to be there in person, that’s how we can sell back quality of life.”

Intelinair Now Integrates With CNH Brands

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 17:58:51 GMT

With the goal of improving access to timely agronomic insights for the entire 2024 crop season, Intelinair announces its AGMRI product integrates with CNH equipment and its operating platform. This includes Case IH Brands and the AFS Connect platform and New Holland brands and the MyPLM Connect platform.

The announcement means more streamlined use and experience for farmers, which can lead to more data-driven decision making for farmers and ag retailers.

This includes easy export of field boundary data, as applied, and yield data to AGMRI.

AGMRI Analyze monitors nine yield-limited factors. AGMRI’s agronomic insights include:

Emergence
Weed pressure
Crop health
Variable dry down

“Increasing connectivity options for farmers provides more ways to use technology to help improve efficiency on the farm and protect yield potential,” said Kevin Krieg, Director of Business Development at Intelinair. “This new connection is one more way farmers can efficiently get insights to make real-time data-driven decisions and inform the next year’s crop plan.”

Dan Danford, Precision Technology Partner Manager from CNH, said: “By establishing connections with important partners like Intelinair, we aim to drive interoperability between the various systems and services our customers use to maximize the value of their data and actions in the field.”

2024 AgTech Predictions: 5 Trends To Watch

Tue, 09 Jan 2024 16:51:10 GMT

In 2023 the agricultural industry faced challenges from extreme weather to supply chain issues.

Ron Baruchi, CEO of Agmatix, outlines the key trends he anticipates impacting the agricultural industry over the coming year:

#1 - Generative Artificial Intelligence in AgTech

Of all the 2024 trends in digital agriculture, the role played by Gen AI, or generative AI, is likely to be one of the most significant. The potential of Gen AI on the global economy is already being calculated in trillions of dollars. There is a historic opportunity to optimize processes, cut costs, and importantly, fuel innovations through improved modeling to fuel decision-making. Companies are already using Gen AI through Digital Crop Advisors, allowing agronomists to distill agronomic data into actionable recommendations for farmers.

These tools enhance crop management by analyzing big agronomic data, providing AI-supported insights to optimize production practices. This helps farmers understand patterns affecting the performance of crop varieties and production on their specific farms, and tracks climate trends to help farmers become more resilient to the changing climate.

#2 - Using Digital Twins to Optimize Field Trials

An interesting 2024 trend is increased integration of digital twins into field tests and field test planning. A digital twin is a digital model or a virtual representation of an actual physical product, system, or process. These allow researchers and designers to experiment as though they were handling its physical counterpart, reducing the need for expensive and time-consuming field trials.

Generating real-world data is a costly and time-consuming process, averaging more than 150 studies and over 11 years to register a new active ingredient. From 2010-14, developing a new crop protection product cost around $286 million, of which, $47 million (approximately 16%) was budgeted for field trials.

Synthetic data can enhance the performance of digital twins. Based on real-world data, synthetic data can supplement data gaps, significantly reducing the time, cost, and effort in bringing new agricultural products to market. These tools provide a competitive edge for agricultural input suppliers seeking regulatory approval, or seed companies that rely heavily on experimentation to improve their seed genetics.

#3 - Technical Innovation in Regenerative Agriculture

Greater technical innovation and research into regenerative agriculture will continue over the coming year. Essentially mimicking natural process and biodiversity on agricultural land, the ultimate aim of regenerative agriculture is to improve soil health in order to boost yield.

To address the challenges of climate change and feed a global population of over 8 billion, regenerative agriculture is vital. Digital tools use accurate, up-to-date data to create tailored regenerative agriculture solutions. These consider soil conditions, weather conditions, microclimates, and current crop growth or land use, as well as individual budgets and local regulations.

Platforms offering site specific data will likely reign supreme in 2024. A view of sustainability that extends beyond simple carbon metrics and one-size-fits-all solutions is necessary and will enable the establishment of realistic, actionable objectives for growers, promoting sustainability and formulating strategies tailored to local environments.

#4 - Managing Data with Advanced Cloud Solutions

Innovation in agriculture is often data-dependent and the cloud gives researchers the ability to collate, manage, and extrapolate information from data in a way that was previously unimaginable. Anticipated exponential growth in farm data emphasizes the transformative impact - IDC has estimated that by 2036 the amount of data collected on the farm will increase by more than 800-percent. Cloud tools enabling real-time access to field trial data reduces trial duration and cost, and the volume and scope of trials can be increased.

Cloud applications span every aspect of agriculture, optimizing crop management, soil insights, multi-season crop monitoring and analysis, and leveraging local knowledge for decision-making. Cloud-based solutions foster collaboration between researchers, agronomists, and farmers, providing R&D companies with an efficient, cost-effective and scalable solution.

#5 - Innovation Across the Agricultural Spectrum

Agriculture’s innovative history is turning towards sustainability and environmental protection, marking a transformative era. The new year will see progress in climate-resilient crop development.

At the farm level, digital technologies empower farmers to process and use the data they collect. AgTech solutions can help farmers and agronomists measure and demonstrate the return on investment of agricultural technologies. Amidst global challenges, stakeholders using AI and machine learning will drive unprecedented innovation in food production.

About the Author - Ron Baruchi, President & CEO, Agmatix

With over 20 years of experience in the technology sphere, Ron is passionate about using data to solve complex problems. He has used his expertise in technology and AI with Agmatix to improve crop yields and quality while limiting environmental impact.

John Phipps: What the Crisis in Ukraine is Revealing About the Essential Use of Satellites

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 23:16:22 GMT

Necessity is the mother of invention, it is repeatedly said. And nothing helps clarify what is really necessary like war.

In contrast to the previous century, major conflict between developed countries is only a vague historical concept for most people today. Similar to the world wars and variously labeled conflicts like Korea and Viet Nam, the longer the Ukraine War drags on, the more comparisons we can make between memories of war and the realities.

The battle is upending global economics, trade, and geopolitical alignment. I would venture more national defense strategic plans are being revised with greater urgency that ever before as non-combatants watch and analyze not computer models, but real-world battlefield outcomes. The smaller adaptations being made by the citizens and militaries involved may have a more lasting effect.

For example, the cities of Ukraine are being demolished by a staggering bombardment level. So much so that experts around the world are debating when this year Russia will deplete its arsenal. There are indications it is already rationing artillery rounds and may consider using 40+ year old ammo. Even with careful storage, explosives that old won’t be popular with gun crews.

For Ukrainian civilians, one workaround that has proven its value in this devastation has been Starlink. As Russian barrages destroy cell towers and blow up landlines, bypassing them with an easy-to-use satellite internet connection is not just an option but a lifeline.

Starlink, about which I have spoken perhaps too often, can leapfrog shattered communications infrastructure using just the small dish and a little electricity. The same device that allows campers to get online can keep villages in rubble on the communication grid reliably. This visible proof could be a serious blow to efforts to bring cable and tower internet to remaining sparsely populated regions of the world, and especially US farm country.

Extending urban infrastructure never made economic sense, and as Ukrainians are showing us, the future outside metropolitan areas appears to be the rapidly growing armada of low earth orbit satellites, and soon more Starlink competitors. Maybe instead of billions for optic cable which will be routinely sliced by backhoes, our government should hand out Starlink vouchers.

Steve Cubbage: Billionaire Space Cowboys Drive Ag Tech

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 04:17:28 GMT

The coming year marks 50 years since mankind’s greatest achievement. The space race of the 1960s catapulted Neil Armstrong and the U.S. to the surface of the moon.

The technological innovation that accomplished such a Herculean feat literally changed the world in ways still hard to comprehend. Jokingly, the space race’s two greatest contributions to mankind were the Dustbuster cordless vacuum and Tang orange powdered drink.

In all seriousness, if you have to point to an industry and an individual that probably benefited the most from man’s desire to explore and exploit space, then production agriculture and the farmer would be near the top of the list.

Think about it. Precision agriculture owes its existence to the technology that now orbits the Earth and pretty much runs everything down below. Autosteer, drones, imagery and don’t forget the iPhone in your pocket—in some small or large way, these technologies owe their very existence to those who labored on mankind’s greatest adventure to date.

Given that the advancement of agricultural technologies has been inherently joined at the hip to continued advancements in space, it may come as a surprise that the future of space tech didn’t look too good just a few years ago. Dwindling government budgets for out-of-this-world endeavors seriously handicapped NASA’s ability to do almost anything big in space. It is sobering to acknowledge the last U.S. manned spaceflight occurred in July 2011—the final mission of the space shuttle Atlantis. It is an even harder pill to swallow knowing the country that put a man on the moon in the 1960s cannot even get one off the ground in the 21st century. U.S. astronauts have had to hitch rides on Russian rockets for $75 million per ride.

When NASA mothballed the remaining space shuttle fleet, the ability to deliver military, research and commercial payloads into space was seriously compromised. That meant GPS, communication, weather and imagery satellites that needed to get into orbit had to get in a much longer and expensive line to get their shot into space. The problem was NASA was woefully behind in bringing a next-generation space launch delivery system to the table to pick up where the shuttle fleet left off.

NASA’s recent space delivery dilemma may just turn out in the long run to be the best thing to ever happen to the American space program and, in turn, American agriculture as well. That’s because the coolest thing you can do now if you’re a billionaire is build your own rockets and spaceships. Case in point—SpaceX founded by tech mogul Elon Musk is launching its reusable rockets with payloads at a rate and at an attractive price point the industry has never before seen. But Musk now has competition. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has also joined the fray with his Blue Origin company, which has rockets named New Shepard and New Glenn. Then, don’t forget English moneyman Richard Branson and his Virgin Galactic company that’s set to commercialize civilian space travel. And finally, there’s a Turkish immigrant woman named Eren Ozmen who heads the Sierra Nevada Corporation, which has designed a super sleek space plane dubbed “Dream Chaser.”

Affordable ways to get “electronic eyes and ears” into orbit drive innovation and investments and directly benefit industries such as agriculture. A perfect example is a company such as Planet, a startup microsatellite company that is quickly becoming a key player in the ag imagery space. It regularly hitches rides for flocks of its satellites on SpaceX rockets. What Planet and its growing list of competitors have done for today’s farmer is provide detailed, insightful imagery on a much more timely basis. Images of fields are available nearly every other day. In the early days of NASA’s Landsat program, it may have been two to three weeks between images, and you hoped it wasn’t cloudy on that day.

There is a tremendous amount of venture capital money flowing into bleeding edge imagery, weather, ag analytics and artificial intelligence companies. Companies such as Spire merge vast amounts of data from satellites and weather sensors with the power of analytics to bring the power of space tech down to the online cloud for real-time, real-world insights. Satellogic, another microsatellite company, touts its high-flying birds as “spectroscopic satellites,” which pick up signals from light to understand the health of environmental organisms at the molecular level.

That’s a mouthful, but the point is you haven’t seen anything yet, and corn fields are about to be the most probed, prodded and observed square blocks on the planet. The hopeful upside is a more proactive—rather than reactive—agronomy protocol. Buckle up because these billionaire space cowboys are about to take agriculture for one wild ride.

A VRT Recipe for Success

Wed, 21 Sep 2022 02:14:36 GMT

Variable-rate planting has become easier than ever—here’s what you need to know

Like many farmers, Matt Boucher has a field where the ground varies quite a bit. This particular field slopes west to east down to a creek and is pockmarked with areas that have high clay content.

“We could never get yields on those spots no matter what we did,” says Boucher, who operates a fourth generation family farm in northern Illinois.

Before you take to the field, make sure you understand what you want to achieve with your variable-rate program and why.

So when variable-rate technology came along, it didn’t take much convincing for Boucher to put it to work in that field first.

“It just felt logical to us,” he says. “Why put more seed out than what the ground is capable of handling? The same goes for fertilizer. Throwing money at a bad spot might not be the best answer.”

For farmers who aren’t yet on board with variable-rate seeding, the technology has never been easier to use, according to Rudy Raatz, precision ag manager with Minnesota-based SEMA Equipment.

“Once you know the process, it’s surprisingly easy to set up,” he says.

A lot of third-party service providers can help, too—from Climate FieldView, WinField’s R7 tool, Farmers Edge, Farmobile and the list goes on. There are also dozens of trained precision experts at the local retail level ready to help. With the proper assistance, all the farmer really has to do is select the script on their display and everything else is pretty much automated, according to Raatz.

Laura Thompson, Extension educator and on-farm research coordinator with the University of Nebraska, says Boucher’s reason to get started with variable-rate planting was a solid one. That’s because VRT technology has bigger upside potential in fields that are highly variable. Some fields will be better candidates for the technology than others, she says.

The question Thompson fields the most from farmers is about how to set up management zones. Although a variety of information can be helpful (see info below), yield maps will provide the backbone of most successful variable-rate seed prescriptions—and the more, the better.

“Yield maps over time are an excellent starting place for developing management zones,” she says. “Soil series information is readily available, but should not be used alone to create management zones. And consider using remote sensing imagery or soil electrical conductivity to augment your yield information.”

Scott Speck, precision specialist with Nebraska-based CropMetrics, says before a farmer even looks at yield maps and field history, he or she should be asking a few simple questions first.

“Ask why,” he says. “Right now, it is actually pretty simple to set up a variable-rate planting script. But you need to know why you’re doing what you’re doing. That will inform the entire process.”
What is the end goal? Is it to finesse better yields? Is it to address areas of the field that you haven’t been able to advance? Is it to improve efficiencies and get the highest ROI?

“Our customers are asking about it for a lot of different reasons,” he says.

Asking these questions will also help farmers avoid turning to variable-rate planting to patch over other fixable problems in the field. For example, if there are underlying compaction, drainage or fertility issues, address those issues separately instead of trying to “solve” them with variable-rate seeding, Speck suggests.

Does hybrid selection matter? Absolutely—it’s paramount to the process, according to Boucher, who sits down with his seed dealers each year to study hybrids, learning what populations are optimal in each of his management zones.

Speck says he approaches hybrid selection with similar scrutiny.

“I always ask—what are the limits in each zone?” he says.

“Sometimes you’ll get into a scenario where you think that VR failed, but you really just pushed a particular hybrid too far.”

Speck has another piece of important advice: “Analyze everything you do, and make sure you can always learn from what you did.”

That’s where check strips come in. Thompson advises putting in numerous check strips at standard rates. Replicate and randomize them. Variable-rate seeding is basically a science experiment, and all successful experiments require a hypothesis, the experimentation itself and a measurement of the results. Without the strips, useful measurements aren’t possible, she says.

“These strips can be evaluated overall for profitability of your decision,” Thompson says. “Yield in the check rate can also be compared to the variable seeding rates immediately adjacent to these checks.”

That information will help farmers tweak their variable-rate prescriptions for the following season, she adds.

There are stumbling blocks to variable-rate seeding, which are avoidable. For example, if the script doesn’t look exactly right when you roll into the field, tweak it.

“We had a customer who had switched to no-till the year before,” Speck says. “When he got to the field and saw those higher residue levels, he decided to swap to higher seeding rates to ensure good emergence.”

Most setups allow users to type changes directly into the monitor on the go, Speck adds.

Another common issue Raatz has seen is when users don’t set an out-of-bounds rate in the script. It’s not a problem in and of itself, unless so-called “GPS drift” happens during planting. That can happen when planting the outer rows and the GPS temporarily thinks the planter is outside the field boundary, even when it’s not.

To prevent planter row units from shutting off during this phenomenon, Raatz recommends setting the out-of-bounds rate as “average.” For example, if the field’s seeding rate varies from 32,000 to 36,000 plants per acre, set the out-of-bounds rate at 34,000.

After all the hard work of the season, don’t let postharvest evaluation get lost in the shuffle, Thompson says.

“It’s important to have a plan in place from the beginning that will allow you to verify that your changes were an improvement over your standard practice,” she says. “That sometimes gets overlooked.”

Time and patience are required from start to finish, Boucher adds. It’s like peeling the proverbial onion—every new layer exposed presents new insights to explore. Currently, Boucher is incorporating data gathered from soil testing into his prescription maps to further fine-tune them.

“We’re still learning,” he says.

7 Ingredients for Management Zones

If you think of variable-rate planting as a recipe, Pioneer agronomists say there are seven ingredients that can help a farmer “bake the cake.” Take the following into consideration:

1. Your own knowledge of yield history, crop rotations and general productivity of field areas.

2. Soil type, topography, landscape, slope and drainage.

3. Yield history spanning multiple years.

4. Crop productivity ratings based on soil type (if yield history is not available).

5. Irrigated and dryland areas of fields, where appropriate.

6. Soil electrical conductivity and/or soil color.

7. Remote imagery that identifies NDVI, bare soil and crop vigor.

Taranis Smart Scouting Nets $40 Million Investment

Wed, 07 Sep 2022 18:06:47 GMT

Taranis has raised an additional $40 million to further accelerate the use of and development of its smart scouting platform. To date, Taranis has raised $100 million in funding.

With three years of commercial experience, the platform is aiming to be the glue sticking trusted advisers even closer to farmers by providing insights to yield threats out in the field. Its current user base includes more than 100 ag retailers and consultants who use Taranis to deliver crop intelligence insights empowering more informed decision making to help make crop management more efficient.

“Taranis helps make better relationship and better decisions in agriculture,” says Mike DiPaola, Taranis Chief Commercial Officer. “With our leaf-level insights, you can see and understand what’s going on in a field and then manage yield threats through good data and good analysis to improve the farmer’s bottom line.”

DiPaola says Taranis is creating content that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, but they are applying technologies used in other industries with great customer success including Ring doorbells and digital baby monitors.

Via remote sensing, Taranis collects and analyzes leaf-level resolution of fields to identify weeds, diseases, insects, and nutrient deficiencies. The company has been assembling its artificial intelligence engine for seven years with more than 200 million AI-data points.

“This doesn’t replace scouting, it just makes it better,” he says. “And it changes the way retailers can offer services and how farmers are able to manage their farms. The technology is creating the ability for retailers to focus on relationships and provide a new solution at scale.”

DiPaola shares three key deliverables for Taranis:

Scalable: the company has focused on acquiring large amounts of data to amplify the type of insights available
Analyzation: content is collected and then analyzed efficiently and economically.
Usable: Taranis is available as a web application and mobile app

Specific to the past couple of years, DiPaola says the company has improved their product and its value.

“If you want this for your fields, all you have to do is talk to us. We’ve solved a number of obstacles and hurdles for an adviser to get this and work with their growers. So really, to get started, we need two things: planting date and field boundaries,” DiPaola says.

This fall, the team is going to the field with “combine guides.”

“This is a way to know before you go to the field so you can remember the start the crop got—which we have as stand counts—the threats to field—which we have with data and visuals—so we can arm retailers with information they need for next year and farmers know why they got the yield they got,” DiPaola says. “When you see it ringing 230 bu it reminds you of the start you got, the decisions you made.”

The “Digital Acre” Likely To Dominate In Agriculture’s Post-Pandemic World

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 19:04:11 GMT

In February of this year, something amazing happened. Bitcoin, a completely virtual and digital form of currency, exceeded the value of physical gold. Such a watershed moment should come as no surprise to anyone. Instead, it should serve as just another giant flashing neon sign telling us our old analog and physical world is fading like a pair of dim taillights on the horizon.

The life disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have only served as the booster shot to transform our virtual reality into the new reality.

In Dollars And Cents

During a fourth-quarter earnings call, Nutrien’s CEO Chuck Magro put the value of today’s “digital acre” into perspective. “What we’re finding is customers who are digitally active, we have a 30% improvement in share of wallet,” he said. “And actually, the revenue we get from customers that are digitally active with us is actually double that of nondigital customers. And our churn rate is 60% less. So these are all very good indicators that the program is value-adding for our customers—for both them and for us.”

Turning dirt into digital ones and zeros is not an easy task and not always the magic bullet to agricultural nirvana. But such a transformation is allowing traditional market agricultural companies such as Nutrien to participate in the disruption taking place around them instead of watching the disruption from the sidelines.

Consequences Of Stagnation

Staying old-school will become very uncomfortable and downright unbearable very quickly. We’re likely talking a matter of months, not years. That will be true whether you are a producer, ag retailer, grain merchandiser or pretty much anyone in the business of food. And for those doubters, here’s proof that it’s really happening. In just the two years from 2018 to 2020, the percentage of farmers purchasing inputs online doubled; it grew from 8% to 15%, according to an updated Farm Journal survey.

This is not just about “shopping the net” for the best prices on seed and chemicals. It is certainly a part of it, but it goes much deeper. When all the things that support production agriculture such as financing, insurance and commodity contracts switch primarily to a digital delivery mechanism, things will really start to accelerate, and companies investing in digital will separate themselves from the rest of the pack. It will be like the book The Tale of Two Cities. Only this time, the story is virtual and will play out itself across the agricultural landscape. The moral of this story is simple—the digital divide between the haves and the have-nots is set to grow exponentially.

Right now, the road to such growth is likely a bumpy one for many. It is chock-full of potholes, speed bumps, detours, road closures and a flat-out dizzying array of road hazards. The current reality is that serious issues surrounding “data” still exist at both ends of the production spectrum—whether you’re a producer or a business that serves producers.

Digital Dirty Secrets

In recent research by The Sustainability Consortium, 71% of producers interviewed said that their ag advisers or consultants have never suggested increasing farm data collection or sharing such data. On top of that body blow comes the stomach kick—62% of growers surveyed did not use any farm-level data software.

I’ve mentioned these numbers previously, and honestly, there is so much to unpack here that it is hard to know where to start. First, such numbers are embarrassing. Second, if I were a producer and had an adviser who was not pushing me to collect more and better data given what is happening in the marketplace and the industry as a whole, I’d look for a “trusted adviser” who does.

The state of affairs at most agricultural retailers and agribusinesses is not much better. Recently, I talked with an Upper Midwest ag retailer who understood, like Nutrien’s CEO, that a digitally engaged customer is much more valuable than customers who are not embracing digital. The reality, however, was only 10% of the total acres this ag retailer served was enrolled in the retailer’s “precision agronomy” programs. For this co-op, precision agronomy has matured to mean more than just token grid soil sampling. It means real producer-level engagement fosters better and more robust field-level data collection. The logic here is enough layers of digital data have to actually exist in order for a “digital acre” to be born.

The other common problem is once data are actually born, those data are likely to have a pretty rough childhood as they bounce around from one disconnected system to another. In the case of the ag retailer mentioned previously, there were no fewer that 13 different software systems and platforms, and very few of them were connected.

Plus, the dirty little secret in the precision ag community is most of the farmer field-collected data run through PC-based software with origins that trace to pre-21st century. That means most farmer-produced data is stuck on an island—sort of like Tom Hanks in the movie Castaway who only had a connection to a volleyball named Wilson.

Don’t Miss The Rescue Ship

Data is the currency of this millennium. Where data are concerned, we have to grow up as an industry. We have to start connecting the dots. And we don’t have much time. It is time to rescue Tom and Wilson. If not, then millions and millions of acres will end up being castaways.

Ag Data: Who is Driving the Bus?

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 20:10:31 GMT

Big data is more than a buzzword—farmers are harvesting data from machine telematics, yield monitors and input decisions, to name a few sources. There’s value in the data for the farmer to turn around and make decisions, and numerous companies are vying for the information as well.

“It seems like 100 companies are in contention, but that number will fall to 10, then to five and probably down to one,” predicts Terry Griffin , a cropping system economist and precision agriculture specialist at Kansas State University. If there’s one left standing, the monopoly will put farmers at a disadvantage for negotiation power.

Long-term data contracts should trigger an alarm bell, according to Griffin. “There are so many people walking through the door offering a data package, but just sit back and wait a year or two,” he says. “Once you share, your ability to exclude others is diminished. Maybe you’ll have no legal ownership of the data.”

Griffin advises growers to ask prospective data companies three questions. First: How many growers/farms/fields/acres are in the data community today? The question directly relates to the likely success of a given data company in the future and its ability to perform beneficial analyses.

“If you’re the first farm to join a data service then why join at all? If there are not large numbers of farms participating, then a given farm doesn’t have a good reason to join,” he asks.

Second: What analytics conducted on the community will benefit my farm? “If the company’s answer does not benefit the farm, then the farm does not have a clear reason to join,” Griffin explains. “If the answer seems to be benchmarking or database queries, then ask yourself: Is there value to me in participating?”

Third: What data quality control standards are being used? Big data analytics have loosened the requirements on precise measurements compared with experimental data at small plots from research stations, according to Griffin.

“Were varieties tagged correctly to the field? Were yield monitors calibrated and yield data cleaned for anomalies where the harvester was not able to make accurate measurements? If a farmer is considering submitting ‘junk’ data to the provider just to join, what keeps other farmers from submitting the same types of ‘junk’ data?” Griffin asks.

“Right now, some of these data companies don’t pass the sniff test, and if something just seems wrong, it probably is,” Terry Griffin says. “If you’re not sure, then hold and sit tight.”

© Chris Benentt

Bottom-line ownership continues to be the Gordian knot of ag data. Roger McEowen , Kansas Farm Bureau professor of agricultural law and taxation at the Washburn University School of Law, says ag data is a mix of real, personal and intellectual property: “The question is whether ag data ownership will be tied to the ownership of the land from which it derives. In addition, in many situations the landowner also owns the equipment used in production activities that give rise to ag data. The ag data is portable, like tangible personal property, and it is like intellectual property because it’s information.

“So, who owns it? Will ownership of the land and/or equipment be enough to determine ownership of the ag data? This is the basic ‘nut’ the legal system will have to crack,” says McEowen, who is also author of the Agricultural Law and Taxation blog .

“Right now, some of these data companies don’t pass the sniff test, and if something just seems wrong, it probably is,” Griffin adds. “If you’re not sure, then hold and sit tight.”

Z-Trap Boosts Crop Scouting

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 20:09:05 GMT

An electric zap may have just given crop scouting a boost. Z-Trap 1 is an electronic insect trap from Spensa Technologies allowing for remote monitoring of pest problems. Real-time count updates and daily reports of insect activity are sent to the cloud for web- or mobile-based monitoring. The automated process of capturing and counting insects carries the potential for labor savings and greater accuracy of pesticide applications.

Using standard pheromones as a lure, insects fly into the trap and make contact with a high-voltage grid. The voltage drops and the time-stamped data is sent to the cloud. Based on the level of voltage drop, time of day and pheromone within, the Spensa AP data platform distinguishes between insect, leaf or debris. A grower or consultant can log in and see real-time insect totals for days, weeks or months across multiple Z-Trap machines. The insect-catching devices can be turned on or off remotely according to time of day.

“If you factor in driving, counting, replacing when necessary and cleaning, we estimate Z-Trap will save a minimum of 30 minutes of labor per trap per trip,” says Chad Aeschliman, vice president of engineering for Spensa Technologies.

Since 2010, Spensa has tested 400 units in the United States, Australia, Brazil and New Zealand, in corn, soybeans and tree fruit. Aeschliman says consistent and accurate pest counts from Z-Trap enable faster decisions on pesticide applications.

“Labor savings is significant, but another area improved by Z-Trap is timing,” he says. “The stream of data helps a grower recognize when a crop is vulnerable and needs treatment.”

For more information, see spensatech.com/z-trap.html

Farmers Edge Increases Satellite Image Frequency

Wed, 18 Nov 2020 01:52:58 GMT

By partnering with Planet, an aerospace and data analytics company, Farmers Edge will offer satellite images more frequently—every one to three days. Planet says they have the highest number of available satellites, which means even with potential cloud cover farmers should still receive images frequently and at a high enough resolution to identify potential issues. Farmers Edge will combine the satellite images with analytics software to assist farmers during the growing season.

“What we’re finding is with higher resolution and frequency we can ID where there is insect damage in crops’ early stages, which could tell farmers if they need to replant,” says Wade Barnes, president and CEO of Farmers Edge. “We can also identify fertilizer stripping, which can be used to adjust fertilizer application later and save yield.”

Farmers Edge costs $2 to $4.50 per acre depending on the level of service. For more details, visit www.farmersedge.ca.